A Study Of Ling Yutang's Kaiming English Books From The Perspective Of Multicultural Education

The prominence of multi-culture in the world of globalization has driven the progress of multicultural education.The aims of multicultural education are to make students who come from different races,nations,social groups and organizations equally own the opportunity and condition of education.James A.Banks is one of the outstanding representatives in the research field of multicultural education.He has systematically constructed a set of theory on multicultural education and advocates that multicultural knowledge construction is equivalent to the reform of curriculum content and classroom education.This view provides a new research perspective for textbook study.With the development of foreign language teaching reform,the reform demands for English textbooks are getting strong.Besides multicultural teaching capacity of teachers,cultivation of students' intercultural communicative capacity and multicultural acceptability requires the English textbooks with the characteristics of value orientation of multicultural education.Kaiming English Bookscompiled by Lin Yutang in the Republic of China is not only a precious culture heritage,but a representative series of English textbooks in cultivating multicultural construction capacity and intercultural communication capacity.Therefore,a study of these textbooks has important significance in cultivating teachers' capacity on multicultural curriculum integration and students' view on multicultural value orientation.With the help of the literature method,content analysis method and comparative analysis method,this thesis analyzes Lin Yutang's multicultural education capacity and the multicultural compilation characteristics of Kaiming English Books based on Banks' views about multicultural curriculum reform.Through the comparison between Kaiming English Books and Go for it!,this thesis does a research from the macroscopic and microscopic aspects to reveal the characteristics of this series of English textbooks in cultivating students' multicultural capacities of integration,comprehension,expression and construction.The macrostructure includes textbook cover,illustrations and unit structure.The microstructure contains language skills,language knowledge,culture awareness,emotional attitude and learning strategy which are included in the training goals of English curriculum standards.Combining with the analysis of textbook value orientation function,this series of textbooks embodies obvious value orientation of the compiler.It finds that Lin Yutang cultivates students' language knowledge and language skills though his teaching thought of notions,achieves the curriculum content integration of Chinese and foreign cultures by using the illustrations of Feng Zikai and emphasizes the guidance of multicultural value orientation to cultivate the students' views of self-cultivation,localization and harmony and multi-culture.According to the findings,this thesis puts forward some suggestions for the reforms of English teaching mode and English textbooks.First,teachers should be equippedwith the multicultural education view and the capacity of multicultural knowledge construction,realize the hidden curriculum content about diversity of world culture which appears in the textbooks and cultivate students' multicultural view.Furthermore,the teachers should try to cultivate students' intercultural communication capacity and critical thinking by letting them master the necessary knowledge on adapting to the internationalization,and try to explore a new multicultural education method which is suitable for modern Chinese students.Finally,textbook compilers should balance the selected contents on Chinese and foreign cultures.With the strategic requirements of Chinese culture “going out”,Chinese elements and value orientation on Chinese traditional culture should be emphasized in content selection of multicultural textbooks and multicultural curriculum integration.